Wednesday, 7 December 2016

Terms of trade bounce

Australia's terms of trade lifted by a tidy +4.4 per cent in the third quarter, a welcome rebound which means that year-on-year the terms of trade are now +1.4 per cent higher.

More on that in the morning when the national accounts are released to widespread anticipation of a negative print.

I'm not sure whether anyone cares much about the Balance of Payments figures these days, but if they do, there was good news for them today as the current account deficit narrowed to a seasonally adjusted $11.36 billion.

That's an improvement of some 29 per cent over the quarter and the best result in a couple of years - in fact, there hasn't been a significantly better result in half a decade since the December 2011 quarter.

Meanwhile, while we'll have to wait until tomorrow to confirm result, it looks as though net foreign debt, although it has still been increasing slightly, has problem been trimmed back as a percentage of annual GDP.